


Foreigner’s God

by Someplacefictional



Category: God of War
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2020-03-29 11:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19019437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Someplacefictional/pseuds/Someplacefictional
Summary: A bunch of 3 sentence fics.





	1. Ashes

_"A coward that kills his own kin"_

Coming from a being that had attempted to devour all of his own children, Kratos hadn’t paid any attention to that comment at the time; the Gods’ opinion of him held no importance, there was little value in most of what they said - there had been plenty of hollow promises, empty truths, and twisted oaths to confirm that. 

But seeing his son, whose sickness had dyed the sky red, who was at death’s door because Kratos had put him there, had those words floating like the ash now woven into the wind, and they seemed to settle on his very skin.


	2. Fate

Faye paints another line, yellow staining stone, the patterns curling up, up towards the sky. 

Her brush is chasing ghosts, phantoms of that yet to be, all that she hasn’t found yet and also already lost. 

She aches as she leads her own ashes home.


	3. Aphrodite

Sindri tosses the apple at him, and on instinct Kratos refuses to catch it, simply slicing it in half with the axe - despite everything he can’t seem to shake at least _some_ of the habits caused by old traditions. 

He laughs inwardly at the thought, for in Greece Sindri’s action would be considered an attempt at seduction, and for a brief moment Kratos considers revealing the fact. 

He decides against it on the chance he’s asked _why_ that’s the case - he doesn’t want to talk about Aphrodite - and besides, the moment had passed anyway.


	4. Ignorance

“Watch. Your. Tone. _Boy_.”

Atreus feels his stomach plunge to his feet, that was some kind of line (one he only realised was there after he pole-vaulted it) but quickly reminds himself that he shouldn't care, responding with a disregard the stories tell him any true God would use: 

“ _Whatever_.”


	5. Home

Faye can’t help but be nervous as she hands the shield over, but there’s quick relief when it snaps open and Kratos instantly smiles, testing the balance, the weight, tracing the patterns with his fingertips. 

Crafted by one of the best masons in Jötunheim, the anniversary gift is the greatest exposure he has ever had to a piece of her home. 

But Faye doesn’t tell him where it came from, and Kratos doesn’t ask.


	6. Remains

_Sparta_.

Atreus is eager to learn all he can about his father’s home, but (here in the North at least) there are few books, in which the history is vague at best. 

There is less still about the gods; the trail of information he does find is paved with only a handful of stories, and even that stops suddenly dead, as if at a cliff edge.


	7. Branded

“Brok, do- do you regret making Mjölnir?” 

There’s a moments hesitation, “nah, no sense in that, we didn’t have much of a choice last I checked - sides’, it ain’t the hammer that’s the problem, it’s the useless lout who wields it,” 

“Yeah I know, I know, but don’t you ever wish you could get your hands on it, even just to sear away our brand-“ Sindri paused, “it- it could’ve been used for so much _good_ ,” - _imagine a Mjölnir Thor never got to touch_ , he leaves unsaid.


	8. Mother

Atreus tries again, and again, and again, not stopping until his hands are sore and his pencil a poorly sharpened mess, a mark of his frustration. The notebook also took the brunt of it, now without a large chunk of its pages, all of which have found a new home curling up and breaking apart on the fire. 

Out of all his attempts, his mother didn’t look right in a single one


	9. Guilt

Kratos wasn’t sure he could be a father, not a second time. 

When Faye told him, his eyes drifted to the floorboards, his mind to what lay beneath them, and the fear that coursed through him was a bright bolt of such intensity it felt like Zeus himself could’ve cast it upon him - if things went wrong... he can’t do it again. 

_He can’t hurt any more children._


	10. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting this into 3 sentences was like getting a round peg into a square hole.

In seeing the long forgotten messages to Odin and Thor (the desperation woven in plea and scripture) Kratos was reminded of some of the old Grecian prayers he could recall, ancient questions and ancient silence - he had never answered a single one, and in turn, his peoples’ quiet had descended like a gradual fog, his action and inaction alike proving him to be as futile to pray to as the storms or the breezes or the oceans. 

Calls that had mimicked the oath he once begged for he had always blocked out, he couldn’t have allowed a foolish warrior to make the same mistakes he had, and nor would he have bound mortals in the way Ares once did - in never bestowing such powers again Kratos does not regret. 

But the deserving, the just, those who had asked for nothing and reached out only in faith he sometimes wishes he had honoured, for, the pain in abandonment by the Gods Kratos is all too familiar with... a part of him is tempted to answer the last prayer ever called to him, to push across realms, unsure in what he fears most, the silence or an answer.


	11. Relic

Atreus studies the pot as he passes by, trying to piece together the broken shards. 

There’s a pile of bodies, a red tattoo, two chained blades that have risen from clay and paint and are now firmly wrapped around his father’s forearms. 

He looks to Mimir, who also seems transfixed by the discarded pieces, but the head gives him a stare he can’t hope to decipher the meaning behind - there is, however, an apparent agreement: never bring this up, and neither ever will.


	12. Fróðleikr

_Wisdom and knowledge are his:_ Huginn and Muninn whisper to him all that they find, they carry in each beat of their wings the voices of the wind, and in their calls one can hear the secrets of the land - they tell of a man and his son, the pair who kill his ravens, who pluck his eyes from their roosts. 

_The truths of the realms are his:_ Geri and Freki devour the traitors, those who dare to deny him the reality of what they know, as if their lies will save them - there will be no deception, that God, he will reveal where he came from, all that he has done. 

_The future will be his:_ You cannot run from Odin - he has seen the prophecies.


	13. Omega

Surrounded by symbols of war, it doesn’t take Mimir to figure out what place Tyr held amongst this pantheon. 

But, unlike the others, this God’s battles were not all of blood, they were of belief and faith and truth - it was all so achingly foreign, against all Kratos had been taught. 

Comparing them both, a sick and shameful feeling shoots through him to his fingertips - Kratos could never have been this for his own people, he was too young, too foolish, with nothing left to fight for but vengeance - and maybe Tyr’s path was a choice he made in a different fate, but here and now, his legacy will always bear the mark of Ares.


	14. Mistletoe

Baldur trusts in fate more than most, it is something Odin hates about him, but there is little relief anywhere else - promises of cures are hollow lies, but he will honour the Allfather’s commands, if only because there is nothing more he can lose. 

He has an eternity of this utter emptiness ahead of him, where can he find hope and faith other than the future that promises him death? 

Be it needless or otherwise, meaning nothing or the end of the world, he would not care either way.


	15. Queen

Freya cried herself hoarse when Odin stole her wings. 

Her helm (a sickly reminder of what was, and that is the only reason she has it) fits as it always did - behind the metal Freya shuts her eyes, feels the ghost of her wings and pretends, she imagines she can save her sisters. 

For when the dead walk with the living, no good could have come of the Valkyries, and that terrifies her.


	16. Sjá

The reading lessons were going surprisingly ok, that is, until they got to colours - blár comes first, and Atreus is baffled when his father writes it to describe things so clearly not blue, and Kratos is equally confused by his son’s definition. 

Through Spartan eyes the ocean can be whitish to almost black, comparable to wine and to pansies and to purple, but it is never just ‘blue’, and the word for the colour of grass Kratos also uses to describe honey and yellow resins - Atreus desperately wants to learn the tongue (if only to understand how his father sees the world) and in his eagerness he asks Kratos to speak even just a word, which is met with a harsh look and silence. 

But, after a time, there comes an answer: _“xanthos - it is the colour of your mother’s hair, and of the scarf she gave you, and even... in Norse it would be... rafr,”_ and at that Atreus can’t hold back his beaming smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, the topic of Ancient Greek and colour (especially blue) is an incredibly disputed one, with few definitive answers. 
> 
> This chapter focuses on the idea that one name can describe many different shades/hues, but given my limited research - which, again, was not particularly conclusive - I don’t know how accurate this really is, or the minutia of it.


	17. Athena

Kratos isn’t sure if she is part of his mind, if the vision before him is instead an Athena independent of his own guilt and nightmares, or if somehow, she is a twisted mix of the two. 

If she is truly here, Kratos fears for his home, he can’t be certain if Athena abandoned Greece out of necessity or dejection at a land thriving without worship - there could be nothing there for her either way, in the end, she became just another dead deity in a pantheon full of them.

Her measured words are nothing he hasn’t told himself before (there is some relief in their familiarity) and buried within them he can hear the hatred born from him releasing her hope to Greece, the only good he had ever done for his people - to Athena, however, it had made him useless, and had been nothing but a final act of betrayal against gods long slain.


	18. Mímisbrunnr

“You may drink from the well, aye, but there’s a price...” 

Odin didn’t wait, it was a matter of moments before his eye was being gingerly placed into the water - there was no time for Mimir to stop him or explain the joke, and he fears the day the Allfather finds the truth, for there is no doubt that he will, sooner or later. 

His pursuit for knowledge is a desperate one, driven by a fear of both futures Odin knows and ones which he yet does not - there would never be any hesitation.


	19. Jötun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jarðar burr = son of Jörð 
> 
> And (just in case you haven’t heard of them before) the Norns referenced here are the shapers of fate, which is decided around a well at a root of the Yggdrasil. One of these is Urðr, and she herself is Destiny. The well belongs to her.

“Dear Jarðar burr.” 

Thor tenses, grip tightening on the hammer - that is a title he had separated himself from, he’d peeled away the syllables like a chrysalis shed, and winters uncountable had passed since he had heard it last. 

It bears his mother’s name, and the Jötun and her fate have now been stripped from the stories, barred from the future, from him (the Norns at Urðr’s well, if he asked what became of Jörð, would they tell him?), Thor reminds himself he doesn’t care, he doesn’t, and yet here still he stands, all desperate anger and hatred, terrified of an unreachable home resting upon mountain peaks - and so Mjölnir flies, bound by fate and magic to find its mark...always.


	20. Ichor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ichor: the blood of the Greek gods, that isn’t red but gold, and fatal for mortals.

Kratos’ nightmares are gilded, aureate, would glow and flare in the sun if ever made tangible. 

This liquid gold, it coats everything (the blades are bathed in layers upon layers) - it’s even on him, pooling over his hands, settling in his mouth, running into his eyes, his nose, and it, it won’t- it won’t come off, it won’t come off it won’t come off it won’t come off it won’t - he is kicked into wakefulness fighting for air. 

The sight of the metal that once meant wealth now reminds him of more than just home, it makes him feel sick if he stares too long, and (unlike when he was a child, desperate to prove himself) Kratos is thankful that he bleeds red.


	21. Gods

When his father was around - which was rare now, but it happened - Atreus felt an air about him that didn’t seem to sit right. 

It was foreign, ancient, a something-that’s-always-been (from the _beginning_ beginning, even) that’s been messily shaped into a man, and it’s pulling at the seams and twisting under the surface - it slipped through occasionally, in the way he talked, the way he moved; time didn’t seem to exist the same to him, he spoke of it in ways Atreus couldn’t make sense of. 

And then there were instances when if he looked at Kratos too long Atreus felt like his eyes would start to water, where everything is too much and not enough all at once, as if his father can only ever exist in extremes.


	22. Trust

Atreus stays sat, back to the light, resisting the urge to turn and check if his father was returning for the thousandth time - he looked anyway, and there was nothing, as was the case in every instance before. 

It’d been an hour already, but that’s fine, because he’d said he wouldn’t leave him alone again, and Atreus is going to hold Kratos to that. 

He’s going to trust his father to come back because _he promised_.


	23. Stars

Atreus was fascinated by the stars, what they meant, what they stood for, both celebration and distant remains. 

His father did not share his affections - unsurprisingly, it had something to do with gods, about how being strung in the sky was not an honour or a reward, not in truth. 

He chose to love them all the same.


	24. Secrets

Atreus knew his father wasn’t exactly young anymore, but even so, his eyes always seemed centuries older than the rest of him. They looked the way Faye’s stories sounded, like they should belong to someone from within those pages. 

When the boy spoke to his mother of it, she only smiled.


	25. Loki

Faye (through her visions) witnessed what Atreus would become, the shift into a God known as Loki. That included his capacity for wit, intelligence, mischief... his capacity for cruelty. 

She didn’t always like what she saw.


End file.
